Re-Skilling and up-skilling the workforce in the 21st century

 


The fourth industrial revolution is just started. With the everchanging world environment, the need for be relevant and employable is a critical concern of every employee across the globe. Many existing jobs will change in nature and some may fully disappear and there will be new jobs in future that don’t even exists today (Pedron, 2018). Not only the workforce, organizations also must adopt for the changes in the environment and change the skill set of their labor force to exist in the business world and to gain competitive advantage. Emerging of new technologies such as Robotic process Automations, Artificial Intelligence have become substitutes for the monotonous tasks performed by humans there by eliminating or creating new job opportunities for the humans. On the other hand, there are lack of skilled workers in labor market as universities and schools are not producing skilled labors as per the changing requirements of private sector (Pedron, 2018) These issues have directed HR in finding internal solutions to retain the existing employees and match them with the current required skills. Re-skilling and up-skilling are the methods used by HR to overcome from these problems and employees also needs to pay special attention on these to be relevant and employable in the job market.

As per Sivalingam and Mansori (2020) “Re-skilling is to learn entirely new skills sets that will lead to new career positions while Up-skilling is to learn new skills that will support to improve your current position”. HR can use Re-skilling and up-skilling methods as a way of motivating the employees by mean of enhancing their career and ensuring employees skill sets won’t get obsolete. This will show that the employer cares about their employees’ careers and their future (Chakma and Chaijinda, 2020).

To cope up with this issue, some companies in Singapore -especially in IT, healthcare, professional digital services, and engineering sector are getting support from the government in re-educating their employees and introducing a new mentality while they are still in their jobs (Pedron, 2018). CEO of Accenture Julie Sweet says that they have invested nearly $1 billion annually in re-skilling, training and learning initiatives for it’s employees (Sharma, 2021).

Learning and development leaders are having major role to play here by keeping employees up to speed with ever changing skills eco-system (Chakma and Chaijinda, 2020). L&D leaders will have to consider what training and development methods are best for their company goals that can be motivated the employees and get the best out of them while retaining them (Chakma and Chaijinda, 2020). As per Agrawal et.el (2020), there are 6 steps to re-skilling

On contrary companies can’t be tough if their employees don’t want to re-skill or up-skill their selves. That will lead to an unpleasant battle between employee and employer. The willingness of employee is always essential for a successful re-skilling or upskilling strategy. 

There are employees who are already in their comfort zones and doesn't want to make any changes to the current position. Handling them needs to be done carefully otherwise they will be less productive which in turn have an impact on the organization (Fernandez and Aman, 2021)

 

References

Sharma, R. 2021. Accenture invested $1 billion on reskilling and training of employees: Julie Sweet. Available from https://content.techgig.com/upskilling-at-techgig/accenture-invested-1-billion-on-reskilling-and-training-of-employees-julie-sweet/articleshow/81159244.cms [Accessed on 29 April 2022]

Agrawal, S., De Smet, A., Lacroix, S. and Reich, A., 2020. To emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, companies should start reskilling their workforces now. McKinsey Insights (Issue May). Available from    https://www.ceskainfrastruktura.cz/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/To-emerge-stronger-from-the-COVID-19-crisis.pdf [Accessed on 29th April 2022].

Chakma, S. and Chaijinda, N., 2020. Importance of reskilling and upskilling the workforce. วารสาร สห ศาสตร์ ศรีปทุม ชลบุรี Interdisciplinary Sripatum Chonburi Journal (ISCJ), 6(2), pp.23-31. Available from https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/ISCJ/article/view/245447[Accessed on 29th April 2022].

Fernandez, D. and Aman, A., 2021. The Influence of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) towards Employee Acceptance. International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering. Available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dahlia-Fernandez/publication/349401350_The_Influence_of_Robotic_Process_Automation_RPA_towards_Employee_Acceptance/links/60a486bd299bf1921e3505b7/The-Influence-of-Robotic-Process-Automation-RPA-towards-Employee-Acceptance.pdf [Accessed on 01/05/2021]

Pedron, Z., 2018. The skills revolution of the 21st century: It’s time to re-calibrate. On Research (Journal of EU Business School), 1, pp.20-28. Available from https://at.onresearch.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Research-Journal.ONRESEARCH.1st-Issue.pdf#page=20[Accessed on 29th April 2022].

Sivalingam, A.D. and Mansori, S., 2020. How organizations should view reskilling and upskilling the workforce. Sivalingam, AD, & Mansori, S.(2020). How Organizations Should View Reskilling and Upskilling The Workforce. Available from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3721771[Accessed on 29th April 2022].



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